The stories behind the buildings, statues and other points of interest that make Manhattan fascinating.

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Prohibition Headquarters - Nos. 45-47 West 27th Street

Although its core was Beaux Arts; the design took on burly turn-of-the-century motifs like pilasters in the form of fasces and a chunky parapet -- photo Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

In the years just following the end of the Civil War, the
neighborhood around West 27th Street, between Fifth and Sixth
Avenues was a respectable residential one.In 1870 “The Gentleman’s Directory” made note of the boarding house at
No. 45 West 27th Street, saying it “is presided over by Jenny
Mitchell, a very agreeable and entertaining lady, who has four highly
accomplished young lady boarders.”It
called it “a first class house” with “elaborate furnishings.”

As the turn of the century neared, however, the area had
decidedly changed.Sitting on the western edge of the notorious
Tenderloin District, it filled with brothels, gambling houses and saloons in
the 1890s.It was perhaps just that
reputation that prompted the French Church of St. Esprit to purchase both
houses at Nos. 45 and 47 for $59,000 in March 1899.The church continued to operate the buildings
as rooming houses; no doubt with a strict eye on who boarded there.

Change came again to the neighborhood in the first years of
the 20th century.Prompted by
aggressive police crack-downs on illegal businesses and by the northward
movement of the commercial and entertainment districts, the shoddy old hotels
and antiquated houses were being replaced with up-to-date business buildings.

In 1910 Architecture and Building News reported that the two
houses at Nos 45 and 47 had been replaced with “a building,” the architect of
which was H. T. J. Fuehrmann.Henry
Fuehrmann had been chosen by the Manhattan Office Building Co. in 1909 to
design a 12-story loft and retail store structure on the site of the old
houses.

Fuehrmann’s completed structure was a no-nonsense business
building of buff-colored brick with limestone trim.The vaguely Beaux Arts styled structure
included a Greek key bandcourse above the two-story second granite and cast
iron base, and terra cotta ornament at the bases of the long piers that hinted at
Viennese Secessionist influence.

As the Garment District crept northward the building filled with
a number of apparel firms.In 1913
Schroeder & Co., manufacturers of “juvenile dresses,” took an entire
floor.Also in the building were the
Irene Underwear Co.; Rudinsky Cloak and Suit Co.; Karl Light, makers of cloaks
and suits; and H. D. Fertel, “coats, neckwear and muffs.”

But more importantly, with the enactment of the Volstead Act, the building
became Prohibition Enforcement Headquarters.Prohibition agents made few friends in the underworld and his profession
brought a violent and sudden end to the life of agent James F. McGuinness.

On Christmas Eve 1920 McGuinness’s body was found in shallow
water in Newark Bay “with a bullet through his head,” according to the Bisbee
Arizona’s Daily Review.The newspaper
said he “committed suicide, police [in Bayonne, New Jersey] stated
tonight.The family of the dead man, who
was a prohibition enforcement officer, believe that he was murdered.”

Indeed Mrs. McGuinness’s cousin, Joseph P. Tumulty who
happened to be secretary to President Wilson, told reporters “I am certain from
the information now at hand that McGuinness met with foul play.Every fact of his home life negatives any
other idea.”

McGuinness was found with a 38-calibre Colt revolver in his
hand; but at the 27th Street headquarters, S. M. Sewell, acting
enforcement supervisor said it was definitely not the weapon the agent used in
his work.Mrs. McGuinness “substantiated
this by saying that the gun which he carried in his work was in his drawer at
home,” said the New-York Tribune.

A neighbor, James C. O’Neill, who was connected with the
bureau of investigation with the Department of Justice spoke of a “dark
stranger, about five feet eight inches in height” who went to the McGuinness
home the night of the agent’s death.O’Neill
said “there were men who had become his enemies through his refusal to aid them
in evading the prohibition act.”

“I think that Mr. McGuinness was killed in an automobile in
New York and his body taken to Bayonne and stretched out at the edge of the bay,”
opined O’Neill.“That gun might have
been placed in his hand also.I know
that he was a happy man, in good health, without anything to lead him to
suicide.He had money enough too,
because he was getting his wife a seal-skin coat for $200 and had bought $40
worth of toys for his children.”

McGuinness was in charge of about 150 agents and had
recently been made chief of a squad of about 20 men.

That the Prohibition Headquarters was in the neighborhood
which, only two decades earlier, had been the center of vice and crime in New
York City was ironic.The agents worked
tirelessly to rid the city of illegal saloons and clubs.On December 7, 1921 the New-York Tribune
noted “Raids of well known resorts where liquor is said to be sold along
Broadway will continue until the district is bone dry, according to a statement
yesterday by Chief Enforcement Agent R. Q. Merrick.”

On the day prior to the article, more than twenty raids had
been executed.Arrests were not always
confined to drinking establishments.“On
Sixth Avenue near prohibition headquarters, 47 West Twenty-seventh Street,
agents arrested Lee A. Williams, a negro driver.He had a barrel of real beer on his truck,
they say.The beer and truck were seized." The enterprising man operated a sort of mobile saloon. "Williams said he was working for himself and
that his office was on his truck.”

A month earlier the headquarters was the scene of a string
of suspicious robberies that the New-York Tribune hinted could be an inside
job.“A systematic robbery, said to
havebeen continued under the
administration of three prohibition directors, of important documents and
records from the prohibition enforcement headquarters at 47 West Twenty-seventh
Street...Many of the records stolen are reported to have been necessary to
prosecute certain cases now pending in Federal courts.”

The Headquarters was also responsible for controlling
illegal narcotics.In September 1921
Giovanni Ceppellaro was suspected of drug trafficking.Armed with a search and seizure warrant,
agents raided his office on Mulberry Street where they found a large safe made
of wood and camouflaged to look like iron with a coating of shoe polish.In the safe were paper bags containing
$20,000 worth of drugs and $50,000 in jewelry.

Organized crime battled the agents as fervently as the
agents battled them.In January 1922 it
was discovered that the telephone trunk leading into the switchboard at the
Prohibition Headquarters had been tapped for months.“Bootleg or other interests, it developed,
have been in a position to hear all conversations of prohibition officials and
enforcement officers,” reported the New-York Tribune.“This may account for mysterious ‘tips’ which
have reached big concerns about to be raided.”

With amazing nerve, the criminals listening in to the agents
had set up their office in the same building--possibly even using the government's own instruments.“Indications are that the listening-in station was on some floor below,”
said the newspaper.One telephone was
missing from headquarters, as well.“In
checking up the telephone instruments assigned to headquarters the lineman
found himself one instrument short.No
one could account for the missing telephone.”

On December 5, 1933 the 21st Amendment to the
Constitution was ratified and Prohibition was suddenly history.It was the end of the line for the State
Headquarters of Prohibition, as well.The exciting period at No. 45-47 West 27th Street was
over.For the rest of the century the
building housed apparel and novelty firms and drew little attention to
itself.Today, although retail stores
have been gouged into the street level, the old building where “dry agents”
fought bootleggers is little changed above the first floor.